The annual circulation of newspapers and magazines in Turkey last year fell 2.6 percent year-on-year, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Thursday, citing a Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) report.
According to print media statistics for 2017, the total annual circulation of newspapers and magazines published in Turkey plunged to 1.66 billion — dominated by newspaper circulation, at 94 percent — from 1.70 billion in 2016.
TurkStat noted that last year the number of newspapers and magazines totaled 6,124 — with magazines making up nearly 60 percent of the total — down 2.3 percent from 6,265 in 2016.
Though the 176 national newspapers made up only 7.1 percent of the total, they had the lion’s share of annual newspaper circulation, with 83.5 percent.
The nearly 2,300 local and regional newspapers accounted for 92.9 percent of all printed newspapers, but had only 16.5 percent of the annual circulation.
TurkStat stated that last year 342 daily newspapers had 88.7 percent of total annual newspaper circulation in Turkey, while in 2016, 391 daily newspapers had a 90 percent share of total annual newspaper circulation.
One of Turkey’s mainstream daily newspapers, Habertürk, recently discontinued its print edition and announced it would continue to report the news only in its Internet and mobile editions.
“A total of 88.3 percent of the newspapers had political/news/actual content, while 2 percent of them had sector-specific/professional content, and 1.9 percent of them had local administration content,” TurkStat said.
On the magazine side, 61.2 percent of published magazines were national publications, having nearly 82 percent of total annual magazine circulation.
“A total of 24.8 percent of the magazines were published monthly, 22.1 percent of them were published quarterly and 16.2 percent of them were published biannually,” TurkStat said, adding: “For magazines, 59.2 percent of the total annual magazine circulation was monthly magazines, while 9.8 percent was weekly, and 9.8 percent was quarterly magazines.”
Official figures showed that the top three types of content for magazines published last year were sector-specific/professional content (18.4 percent), academic content (13.7 percent) and education/examination content with a share of 7.2 percent.
TurkStat also said last year there were 785 newspapers and magazines published in both Turkish and English, while there were 10 newspapers and 116 magazines published in English alone, and a total of 23 newspapers and magazines published exclusively in other foreign languages.
During the two years of a state of emergency, declared on July 2016 and lifted on July 2018, 70 daily newspapers, 15 news agencies, 20 TV stations, 25 radio stations, 20 magazines and 29 publication houses were closed by government decrees on accusations of being affiliated with “terror groups.”